


Hands

by izayoi_no_mikoto



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hair Kink, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Nonnies Made Me Do It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-07
Updated: 2017-03-07
Packaged: 2019-01-05 06:45:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12184956
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/izayoi_no_mikoto/pseuds/izayoi_no_mikoto
Summary: He misses having hands.





	Hands

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers for the final volume.

Hands. He misses having hands, sometimes.

He used to dream of touching her hair. Fighter she may have been, but she cared about how she looked, and that extended to her hair–-long, golden and gorgeous. She would never countenance a single split end. It was one of the millions of things he loved about her.

But he had feathers, and wings, and talons, and even though he could morph human he didn’t do it often. His human body was ill-fitting on him now, like a poorly tailored suit that hung loose in some places and pinched in others. Even on those few occasions when he’d morphed human to be with her, one hour and fifty-nine minutes at a time, he’d never touched her hair, not like he’d wanted to. He couldn’t have stroked her hair with wings and talons, but his borrowed hands, too, were weak, clumsy instruments. So he only ever dreamt of it.

He still dreams of it, even now. Perched on his branch in the dead of night, he closes his too-sharp eyes and dreams of touching her hair. Soft touches to the top of her head. Strands slipping smooth as silk through his fingers. Tucking a lock of hair behind one ear. Maybe he could brush it. She’d had at least five or six different kinds of brushes and combs, and he would use all of them. She’d used a serum on frizzy days; he could pour it into his palm and rub it into her hair for her. After a rough battle, when she was still dressed in nothing but a leotard and her eyes were still ablaze, he could sit down behind her and pick out the snarls, one by one, his fingers slow and methodical and gentle in the way she would never allow herself.

Sometimes he wakes up with a swollen heart and eyes that cannot cry, and he thinks about it. He could flutter down to the forest floor and morph in the darkness, borrow his old body that isn’t really his anymore, and dig his clumsy fingers into his own hair and imagine. Pretend. But he knows without trying that it wouldn’t help. It wouldn’t change anything. Because his hair was always short and messy and coarse, and hers was… beautiful. As beautiful as the rest of her. So he doesn’t do it, any of it. Instead he fluffs his feathers out against the cold and huddles down, his wings a part of him now.

He misses hands, sometimes. But only because he misses her.

**Author's Note:**

> (Inspired by the prompt: 100 words of hairbrushing)


End file.
